Gail A. Nielsen

Gail A. Nielsen is the Iowa Health System Clinical Performance Improvement Education administrator. In this role, she leverages system-wide knowledge capital to build capacity for transformational change, and capability across the enterprise, to improve and sustain clinical performance.  In this role, she serves as mentor, coach and improvement advisor for Iowa Health’s system-wide performance improvement initiatives including the Health Literacy Collaborative and the Rural Hospitals Health Literacy Collaborative.

Nielsen previously served as patient safety administrator for Iowa Health System for four years.  In that role, she coached and influenced affiliate hospital leaders to achieve measurable improvements in patient safety, developed system-wide patient safety initiatives, and established a collaborative vehicle for implementing patient safety efforts.  She was selected one of the first two Denham Patient Safety Scholars in 2002, and in 2004, completed the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) certificate program: Patient Safety Officer Executive Development Program.

In 2003, Nielsen was awarded the prestigious IHI George W. Merck fellowship.  During this one year fellowship (2004 – 2005), she completed the Harvard School of Public Health Clinical Effectiveness Program, co-authored an influential paper on leadership and spreading improvements, and was a key member of IHI’s work on patient-centered care and Transforming Care at the Bedside. She then joined the IHI faculty to continue her innovative work in this area.  Currently, she is faculty on two innovation communities for IHI: Transitions Home: Redesigning the Discharge Process and Reducing Harm from Falls in Hospitals.

Nielsen is a nationally known lecturer and facilitator on the topics of leadership in the spread of performance improvement, health literacy, patient centered care, preventing falls and harm from falls in hospitals, and redesigning the discharge process.